sit as God in the temple and throne of Christ, with the keys of hell and death, to deliver them? What stronger presumption can there be of this than the event, and that the error of purgatory had so long been working before the Devil seemed to know how to make this use of it, which at length he spied out, and plied lustily with signs and wonders? If all this be true, then it follows still that it is spiritual fornication, which the Holy Ghost in Scripture intended, and the event hath marked out, for the soul of Antichristian abomination and impiety. But of the matter of miracles and lying wonders, more in the second part of my text, which is the proper place thereof. 3. And, lastly, the great apostasy is a thing proper to the latter times; which I will shew, when I come to it, to be the last times of the fourth kingdom of Daniel, Dan. vii. 25, and alibi. But amongst all other corruptions, only the spiritual fornication of the Church and Spouse of Christ will be found proper to these times. ὕστεροι καιροί. CHAPTER IX. Two exceptions against the foregoing assertion, that Idolatry should rather be laid upon the Pagans.-This answered and proved, that Pagan Idolatry is not meant, nor the Saracen or Turk the Antichrist meant, in Scripture.That Antichristianism cannot be charged upon those that acknowledge the true God and Christ.-The answer to this, wherein is interwoven the Author's serious and pathetical expostulation with the Church of Rome.-That Antichrist is a counter-christ, and his coming a counterresemblance of the coming of Christ, shewn in several particulars. BUT you will still allege for her behalf who seems all this while to be charged, that Antichrist and the Man of Sin is set forth in Scripture as the most hateful and execrable thing that can be in the eyes of God Almighty; but how can such a thing be said, and comparatively be, where the true God, with Christ his Son, God and man, are in any sort acknowledged and worshipped? (h) Lord that the whole train of Scripture, in the prophets especially, and the example of the Church of Israel, should not cure this web, and take this film from the eyes of men! Doth not the Lord say of Israel, that He had chosen them to be a special people to himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth? Deut. vii. 6. You only have I known, saith he, of all the families of earth. (Amos iii. 2.) And is not Christ the Lord of Christians, and is not the Church his Spouse? *This is a great mys tery. Ephes. v. 32. No marvel, then, where this mystery is not considered, if the mystery of iniquity be not understood. Alas, poor Church of Israel! thy case, it seems, must have been a very hard one. For what nation in the world ever suffered so much rebuke, so many plagues, so much wrath as thou hast done? Yet couldst thou say for thyself, thou never forsookest the true God altogether, but wast still called by His name; only thou wouldst fain worship Him in calves and images, as other nations, thy neighbours, did their Gods; thou wouldst needs follow the fashion, and this was thine error. Thou never meantest to cast off thy Jehovah altogether, but still wouldst have him to be thy God, and thyself to be his people; yet thou tookest this liberty, to have other Gods besides the Lord thy God, viz., thy Baalims and demon-gods of other nations about thee; and yet hopedst that Jehovah the God of heaven, thy only Sovereign God, would not be offended thereat, since thou retainedst him still in chief place and honour with thee. Why was thy God, then, so unkind and cruel unto thee, to call thee whore and prostitute so often; all his prophets continually baiting thee Iwith that so foul and odious a name of abominable harlot? Why did He scatter thee, and even drive thee naked among the nations, before his jealousy would be satisfied? For it seems He is * τὸ μυστήριον τοῦτο μέγα ἐστιν. far more indulgent to his second wife, the Church of the Gentiles. For she worships her God in images and crucifixes, yea, calls a piece of bread her Lord and her God; and yet saith, He is no whit jealous of her, but well pleased. She, though espoused to Christ Jesus, the Son of the living God, as her sole mediator and intercessor in the presence of God his Father, yet thinks she may fall down to Saints and Angels, yea to as many images of them as ever the Jews had of their Baalims, or the Gentiles of their demons. And yet, forsooth, because she makes her Lord the chiefest still in the honour of her affection, and uses the rest of her lovers no farther than she may still yield the first and chief place to him, she verily supposes he is no whit offended with her: whereas Israel would have been called a whore a thousand times over for as little as this; yea and like enough to have been cast off too, and her nose slit, (Ezek. xxiii. 25,) long before this time. Nay, but she wipes her mouth, and asks why her Lord should be angry; for she calls him still her Lord, and acknowledges and professes him still to be her husband. If He hath a mind to be angry with any, let him go to the Turks, Tartars, and other Mahometans, or to the Pagans, who will not acknowledge him at all to be their Lord, though he hath offered himself, and perhaps wooed some of them; but they would none of him, but have married themselves to other husbands: here, if he will be jealous, is matter for his jealousy. But, thou Christ-Apostatical strumpet, knowest thou not the first commandment of thy Christian decalogue to be, thou shalt have no other Christs but me? What doest thou, then, with so many Christlings? Knowest thou not that an husband is more grieved and dishonoured by his wife's adultery, than if any other woman whatsoever, yea suppose his kinswomen and daughters, should play the harlot? What are Turks, Tartars, or any other unbelieving nation under heaven, unto thy Lord and Saviour ? * Are they not all as strangers to Him, and He to them? But as for thee, He had chosen thee out of many nations to espouse thee to himself; so that thou mayest say with Israel, (Isa. Ixiii. 19,) We are thine; but as for them, thou never bearest rule over them; they were not called by thy name. But to thee, to use the words of Ezekiel, ch. xvi. ver. 8, &c., he sware an oath, and entered into a covenant with thee, and thou becamest his, and wert called, and wilt still be called, by his name. Thee he washed with water, yea, thoroughly washed thee from the pollution of thy birth, and anointed thee with oil. Thou wast decked with gold and silver, and thy raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work; thou didst eat fine flour, and honey, and oil, and wast exceeding beautiful, and * Jerome in Ez. xliii. dicit, Ego hoc arbitror quod non polluat nomen Domini, nisi ille qui visus est nomini ejus credere et quomodo tollit membra Christi, et facit membra meretricis, qui prius Christo credidit ; sic ille polluit nomen Domini qui prius nominis ejus fidem susceperit. : |